Gary Daggers
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 20, 2025
Excellent multiband radio , purchased to take on travels. Lots of great functionality ( check vendors specs for full ) . Good battery life , lots of features. To be honest it took me a while to get to grips with some of the functions byt reasonable instructions included plus there plenty of advice avialble online line. Still a great purchase though so good value for the money.
Madhur
Reviewed in the United Arab Emirates on January 5, 2025
Better than expected. Controls and auto save functions are amazing. Easy to operate. Signal capabilities could have been better.
Felix Vega
Reviewed in Mexico on September 16, 2022
Justo lo que esperaba ,buena recepcion de estaciones ,buena portabilidad para viajes o actividades al aire libre
profgyland
Reviewed in Australia on January 30, 2022
Well, what shall I say? I have my HAM radio license and I am used to highly expensive professional radio transceivers and receivers. I am also a little bit of a radio addict and a lover of radio receivers of all kinds. I came across this PL-360 that is also available under other trades names and in the USA under Government Equipment available and for sure of different sales prices. I ordered this item at Amazon and was disappointed about the performance when I received it.It was my fault as always, radio amateurs think that they know it all. Wrong! Without reading the instruction manual you will be stranded in no time. This is not the old fashioned, as usual, tuning knob device as this is more the latest Easy Tuning Mode facility as used by very expensive Icom IC705 SDR (Software Defined Radio) computer radios.Tuning was easy if you follow the manual. - The sound is out of this world compared to the dimensions of the radio as well the price. If you use the supplied two different antennae you will find an open world of Short Wave Radio. It is beyond belief what you have in your hands. I used a professional antenna system and I was surprised what I got. It was not less than my highly expensive broadcasting Short Wave receivers. I missed the SSB facility, but then that is not of interest for the normal mortal.This radio is one of the few essentials for any kind of emergency that occurs frequently in Australia, fires, water, storms, and other unpleasantnesses that mother Nature has to offer frequently. This radio is small and can go everywhere and will inform you what is on and what is not. At least you are informed of what is happening around you. In these uncertain times, it is good to be and keep informed. One never knows what is next happening. The mobile phone maybe not working, out of power, or prevented to connect to the service provider. MW and SW are always working somehow and you are informed.My advise:This radio is not a luxury, nor a toy but a necessity and the price is just perfect.
Raymond
Reviewed in Canada on January 10, 2022
Seams to have a mind of its own, turns on by its self, for some reason, most stations l get are gospel from the states,need to read the manual a few times to understand it.
Jesse Magee
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2014
Just received my PL-360 today. Here are the first impressions after 10 hours of ownership.Build Quality - I've seen reviews criticizing the build quality of the unit. I don't see it. The unit feels substantial, the buttons have a very quality feel to them. The unit isheavy, but not uncomfortably so. The printed graphics on the unit are straight and quite legible. The volume and tuning dials do not feel cheap and give positive feedback when used. The headphone and antenna jacks are tight. The antenna is substantial and moves easily. In total, the unit seems to be well built and seems as though it will be durable.Reception and Sound - In use, I'm quite impressed with the reception and sound quality. I live in the high desert area of California and, while the bands are crowded, we are quite a distance from the cities and reception tends to be a very spotty affair. We also are on the eastern side of mountains so shortwave reception tends to be horrible. This unit is performing better than any small radio I have owned, and better than a lot of larger and much more expensive units I've seen. My other small radio (a Chinese made Grundig) receives, on a good night, 3 stations on shortwave. Without an additional antenna this unit is picking up over 25. I am getting 25 clear AM stations and 15 FM stations. I am clearly receiving AM from San Francisco and Radio Havana, two stations I've never managed to even get a hit on with previous radios. The external AM antenna makes a tremendous difference in AM reception.The ETM function (Tecsun's proprietary "Easy Tune Mode") works extremely well. It scans the band and pulls out the frequencies where it finds stations and allows one to scan through without manually hitting all the frequencies. A very nice feature.The speaker sounds fine, I agree with other reviews that it is a bit tinny for music but is fine for AM talk radio and shortwave, which are the two primary uses I will have for it.What's In The Box? - The unit comes with an external clip style antenna, a set of ear buds and a nice padded case.A couple of caveats - After spending some time with the unit I must say that the one weak point seems to be the connection point for the external AM antenna. I believe that any solid blow or one drop could very easily cause either the female connector to break within the unit or the male connector to shear off. Something to be aware of, and careful about. The other fault is with the belt clip, which is a nice feature but seems flimsy and poorly made in comparison with the rest of the unit. I don't trust it and have removed it from the unit completely. A small issue, but one which is inexcusable in such an otherwise well-made product. This is compensated by the case, which has a nice two way belt loop. Would be nice if the case had a storage area for the MW antenna and external SW antenna, but that is just nitpicking.I purchased the PL-360 to use at my job. I work in a very solid building with quite a bit of steel in the construction and a lot of fluorescent lighting. My previous small radio had massive amounts of interference from the lights. I am very eager to try the Tecsun and see how well it performs. I will post an update when I've given it a thorough test.Other than the small issues above I am very happy with the PL-360 and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.UPDATE: Wanted to add in some other thoughts after a few more days with the PL-360. This thing isn't just easy on batteries, this thing SIPS batteries! I've had the same three standard alkaline batteries in this radio through over 40 hours of listening and the battery display JUST dropped by 1/4. Amazing. And having now used it several nights at my job I am very impressed with the AM reception. Only in the very center of the building do I have an issue with reception, but even there it's still listenable, just a bit noisy. BUY IT!!!
11Charlie
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2012
I ordered this radio so I could have a good emergency radio. The characteristics I was looking for were: Compact, lightweight, coverage of FM/AM/Shortwave, and easy to use.I'll touch first on what you want a radio to do, which is be a radio. My favorite feature of this radio, especially on shortwave is the ETM button. The ETM feature allows you to scan the whole band (or multiple bands on SW) for stations that are coming through. This is especially useful for shortwave since the content you can receive varies greatly based on time of day, and solar conditions. So before I sit down to start listening I just perform an ETM scan of the shortwave band (give it about 2 minutes to complete the scan, you can watch what freq it's on with the display), and then I can just dial through the handful of stations I am receiving instead of tuning around endlessly looking for something. this feature isn't as needed for FM and AM since the stations you listen to in your area are pretty much always there. Great for travel, though.It seems sensitive enough. I like the fact that it actually displays the signal strength and signal to noise ratio on the screen so you can adjust the position of the radio, or your antenna as needed to really lock in to the signal. Also, having a digital display is a huge advantage in SW so you know exactly where you are in the band instead of guessing more or less.The included external AM antenna works great, but generally I can pick the signal up by just rotating the radio around a bit until it sounds clear. But since AM reception is highly directional having the external antenna on in the headphone style jack is nice so you can just twist that around instead of your whole radio.I was also pleasantly surprised to see that hitting the display button rotated through several options including the temperature, which as near as I can tell is accurate.As other reviewers have stated, it's about the size of a TV remote which makes it very easy to stow away in a small compartment in any of my backpacks, or a magazine pouch on a vest. It's not heavy, but it's not so light that it feels flimsy. I haven't tried throwing it against any walls, but it doesn't feel like it's going to come apart in my hands.On the note of its physical build, there's one thing about it that I really like that I hadn't thought of before ordering it. The expandable whip antenna is housed inside the radio. So if you have the antenna pushed all the way in to the unit, it's not going to catch on things and get torqued off while stowed away with other gear. One downside to this is that it doesn't rotate but I haven't really found the need to gripe about that in practical application.I've had the radio for a little over a week now, and I'm still on the same 3 AA rechargeable batteries that I put it in when it arrived, and the battery gauge is still showing full. I use it for a couple of hours daily.The only two cons I can come up with are: It uses 3 batteries, which makes it odd for using batteries that you recharge in pairs or fours since you don't want to mix weak batteries with full batteries, and you can't directly enter a frequency. This is only slightly painful on shortwave, but you can use the band up and down buttons to get you within thumbwheel scrolling distance. I also wish it had SSB receive capability, but for its size and price I couldn't expect it.All in all, this is a great radio that does everything I want it to do! You'll get to hear plenty of distant shortwave stations with the included clip on antenna, or you can do yourself a favor and get an alligator clip and a spool of magnet wire to run outside (but not too much, or you'll overload it.) Have fun!